Business Startup Guide: Steps to Successfully Launch Your First Venture w/ Brad Sugars

0:00So how do I know that my marketing is working? You're making money. If you want to start a business, you need to listen to this podcast episode. Brad Triggers has over 30 years of business knowledge and experience. I got to ask him about marketing, about sales, about how to start a business. People are like, I don't want to invest it. I want to own it 100 % myself. Listen, you better off to have a small piece of a big pie than a big piece of a tiny pie. Why are you building a social media following so you can find investors? You do not need a company or a corporate structure or anything to get your first customers.

0:32You just need to get going. Take action. If you want to start a business, please listen now and let's go into it. Welcome to the Young Success Podcast, a special series of the Big Success Podcast. This week, Brad Sugars is interviewed by GONA, a recent master's graduate and aspiring entrepreneur. Brad, I recently completed your 30x business program. And in one of the first 30 videos, you explained the ladder of wealth. Can you explain the different stages of the ladder of wealth and how individuals can progress from one stage to the next one effectively? Yeah, so wealth follows a very simple path.

1:11You start out as a student, which as a student, you're an apprentice employee. So you're learning how to be an employee. And a student, I call it level minus one because it costs money to be a student. Whether it costs you, your parents, or society money, being a student costs money. And so then you get a job and you pay taxes. And it's to pay back the cost of you going to school, the cost of raising you, health care, all those sorts of things. You pay taxes to pay back the first 20 years of your life where you were a cost. Your parents obviously don't get paid back much, but the world gets paid back.

1:48And so as a student, you learn how to get a job sort of thing. You learn how to apply for a job, how to write a CV, how to do a resume. Well, the challenge is no one then teaches you the next phases of wealth. And so from having a job, a job is really just an apprenticeship to your own business. So you should have lots of different jobs. You shouldn't just try and have one job. You shouldn't just, you know, pencil yourself into one sector type thing. You should aim with your job to become great at something so you can start a business in that area type thing. If you're in the chimney sweep business, learn that business and become amazing at it so you can start your own chimney sweep business.

2:33Because the goal of having a job is to learn enough to start a business. And whether that's learning the thing you do or the marketing of it or the sales of it or whatever it is, but you've got to learn enough to start your own business. And that generally is going to take you between three and seven years. Okay. If you've been in the same job 10 years, you don't, people say, you know, I've got 10 years experience and I call bullshit. You've actually got one year's experience. You just did it 10 times type thing. It's like the photocopied year. And so your job then, once you get into your own business is to learn how to employ people.

3:16So your first job is start a business where you do all the work. And then your job is to learn how to get other people to do all the work and you run the business. And then your third phase is to go from, so that's student employee, self-employed. Then you go to manager where you're managing employees who do the work, you're running the business. And then ultimately you get to business owner where the business runs without you type thing. Your job is to do yourself out of a job. You don't want to be the CEO. You want to be the owner of the business and have other people do the work. From there, it's about learning to invest.

3:50So once you've got the business running, making good profits, you've then got to invest that money. And there's three categories of investments. And we do that in wealth, 30x wealth, but it's businesses and then getting into real estate and then into the stock market. And then finally, you want to become an entrepreneur, which is where you're not investing, you're building deals that other people invest in. So that's as fast as I can tell you the latter. I put a whole book, Billionaire in Training, together for that one. So being in college, they don't really explain how to exactly go from being an employee to being self-employed.

4:33So I would love to dive deeper into that and see how exactly that works. So what strategies or methods can I use to generate an actual business idea that is both realistic and promising? I would say there's three ways to get into your own business. First is a side hustle. Start it as a business. If you're a web designer by day, then start a side hustle doing it for friends and family. Because the thing about the side hustle, and a lot of the people start with network marketing businesses or, you know, lawn mowing companies when you're a kid or selling a newspaper. That was me when I was a kid.

5:15And what you're doing in that side hustle is learning. It's not about whether you succeed massively in that or not. You're learning sales and marketing and, you know, you're learning all of the things that you need to learn. The second would be to buy a business. Now, unfortunately, a lot of people think you have to have a lot of money to buy a business. You don't. If you learn how to buy a business, you can actually buy one where you get what's called vendor finance, which means the current owner of the business lends you the money to buy the business. So you buy the business and you pay them back out of future profits of the business.

5:54I think that's possibly the best way to get into business. I would suggest though that you need to have done a bit of learning beforehand, whether you learn. See, if you've got a job where you're in sales and they're paying you to learn sales. They're sending you to courses. Your first jobs should not be about how much you earn. Your first job should be about how much you can learn from that position, how many connections you can make. If you're in a job the way you're doing no learning and no connecting, get the heck out of that job. You want to be in a job where you're learning and connecting.

6:31Okay. Build your resume, build your database. A lot of young people don't think of building their database, but every person you meet is, goes on your database of your future, their future investors, their future customers, their future buyers, their future. Do you know what I mean? Like you got to build that database and that connectivity when you're young, you got to, I guess it's simple. You got to make up in numbers what you lack in experience and skill. So more networking when you're younger, not less. I see young people get a job. They don't do any networking. It's like, hang on, your job as a young person is to network.

7:07Why did you get to that college so you could build a network? And you've built a network of people who are all trying to build a network. You know, you got to get out there in the market, join clubs, join chambers of commerce, join networking groups, do all that sort of stuff. And ultimately, the third way to start your own business is to get your first customer. Okay, so if you can get one large customer in a business and just start there. So like, for instance, you're in marketing. If you signed one customer to your business that was more than your salary, you're started. Or at least half of your salary type thing.

7:49And then it's not a side hustle. It's a dive in deep and get going sort of thing. But that's where those three methodologies is where I would start with a business. And a lot of people keep trying to come up with the idea. You know, I'm going to sell widgets or I'm going to invent this software. And I call stupid. Sell shoes. Shoes are the things that everyone already buys. They already have a budget for it. Don't try and sell something new. Sell something that people are already buying. You know, if you look at it this way, don't go dig for gold when there's a gold rush. Sell pans to everyone.

8:30Levi Strauss, the jeans guy, made more money in the gold rush than anyone else because everyone needed a pair of jeans to go digging for gold. UPS makes more money out of the internet because everyone sends packages type thing. You've got to be that sideline person. And, you know, the best way to build a successful restaurant is find a starving crowd with money. Not hard when you think of it that way. But most young people try and invent a new product or a new idea or a new thing. No, a new way of selling something that people already buy or a better way of selling it. You look at, I mentioned shoes.

9:11Zappos here in Vegas, Tony, Andy, and Fred, they didn't invent shoes. they just found a better way of selling shoes that made sense for everybody gave everyone a better customer service perfect so now that i realize okay i want to do marketing that's what i want my business to be in i have my business idea it is realistic and promising what is my next step you mentioned the business plan in 30x business what are some essential elements i should include in my business plan and how can I ensure I'm communicating it effectively in it. Okay. So in the beginning, you're writing a business plan for three reasons, right?

9:55Number one is so that you think stuff through. To actually document it, you've got to have thought about it type thing. And that's why the plan itself is less important than the planning, the discussing it with people, the bouncing ideas, the going to mentors or to going to groups and talking about your business and throwing ideas out there and getting people to debate you on your ideas, build a team around you. Even if they're not going to work with you, it could be friends, family, parents, other business people you know. Having a mastermind group that you plan your business with is really important.

10:35The second reason you're building a business plan is to raise capital. Okay. So if you want to raise capital, which every business wants to raise capital, right? The only way to raise capital is to have a great business plan that you put in front of people. Now, business plan is a lengthy document. The person investing is, if I'm investing in a young person and I like investing in 20 year olds, because by the time I'm 70, they're in their 50s and they're doing great. Do you know what I mean? It's like to me, the older I get, the younger I want to invest in people because then they've got the energy.

11:12I've got the money and the wisdom. They got the energy type thing. And young people that don't make the mistake I made, which was thinking, okay, I got to bootstrap this. I got to wear it as a badge of honor that I can work 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Now that you want to work hard, but you want to also work smart and working smart is raising capital. Now you've got to do the right documentation. And that is a full business plan, a summary of the business plan and a pitch deck, right? And so you want to get in front of people. And that's why you've built a database from when you started in business is who do you put it in front of all those people?

11:52Most people's only database is mom, grandma, and Uncle Fred, and they wonder why they can't raise capital. No, you've got to get in front of a lot of people. Now, if you put the business plan in front of very smart people, and they say, no, I'm not investing, you have to ask them why, and fix your business plan. You know, if very smart people are telling you, I'm not investing in that, and there's three things to get an investor. Number one is a great business idea, but that's the smallest part of what will get you the capital. Number two is a great team, right? If I go out to do an investment, right?

12:27If I go out and I'm building a new business, I will get investment capital within a day. Why? Because people believe in me. It's not the idea or whatever. Yes, they've got to like the idea, but they believe in me and know that I'll get them a return. And the third thing is, how am I going to get my money back? If I'm an investor, I need to know, are we going to sell it at some point? What's the goal? Is it to, you know, I got to know how I'm going to get my money back. And then ultimately, the third reason for developing a business plan is to actually have something to follow when you start it.

13:01But the business plan itself is not as important as the action plans, the 90 day plan and the weekly plans and the daily plans. Daily plans are the most important plans in your life. if you achieve what you set out to do every day, then guaranteed you'll achieve what you set out to do every month, every year and so on. But you got to achieve the daily plan to do that. So you just said that if I want to create a business plan, I should surround myself with people who have gone through that process, know a little bit about business. What if I don't have anyone in my circle that has - Get a bigger circle.

13:40How do I do that? Well, books is a circle. podcasts is a circle. Online forums is a circle. There's a million circles for you to get into out there. You know, just go and join groups, go and be a part of things. I think people, you know, we live in the loneliest generation in the world. And the reason people are lonely is because they sit in front of their freaking computer and play on social media, for goodness sake. That's not a circle get out there there's i guarantee you in every city in the country there is a young entrepreneurs group guaranteed and if there's not start one you know get out there and do it and you can leverage the internet to start it but you want to get together face to face find 10 friends or 10 people that are all interested and meet up with the local dang sandwich shop and you know if you do that once a week and you start reading books together or start a book club or something like that, or my company Action Coach, find your local Action Coach.

14:44They will put you in touch with people. But you've got to be willing to get uncomfortable to get comfortable. And how do I find investors? Well, you don't find investors. You get to know investors. So investors are every single human being you ever get to meet. If you're not out there meeting people, if you go to a concert and you meet some gal or some guy that's sitting next to you, you find out who they are, you connect with them. You keep in touch. What is your internet? Why are you building a social media following? So you can find investors, you know, so you can find future employees, future customers.

15:25Don't do it just so, you know, someone can like the photo of me at the beach. Woohoo! That's dumb shit. you know you've got to use your network and you got to build that network and you know when people say i want to find investors now you can go and find angel investor groups you can go and find the venture capitalist but if you're a young person starting out no venture capital company is going to put you in front of them easily you have to work dang hard to get in front of groups like that i've even had to work hard i would go to investment seminars where there were big investors there, I would pay to attend the seminar just to hang out with people that had lots of capital that needed to invest it type thing.

16:07And you start chatting to people at an investment seminar and you find Bob sitting next to you who's got 600 grand in cash that he needs to invest. You meet Mary the other side and she's got 200 grand she needs to invest. And you're sitting there and they go, what do you need to invest? Well, I'm looking for people who need to invest. I'm actually not here to invest. I'm learning about investing so I can find investors who want to invest in my ideas. Awesome. So now I have my idea. I have my business plan. What is my next step? So when it comes to those legal requirements and choosing a business structure, how do I determine the most suitable business structure for me and for my venture considering options like partnership, LLCs or corporations?

16:54Firstly, it's different in every part of the world. OK, when you first start out, people worry too much about what their structure should be and they stop doing things just for a structure. You know what you should do when you first start out? Get a customer, have them pay you direct in your own name. It makes no difference. You do not need a company or a corporate structure or anything to get your first customers. You just need to get going, you know, and so that's the thing. Now, from a structure point of view, generally a corporation is the best methodology in the world. Now, there's different types of corporations.

17:29A partnership doesn't limit your liability. So you're looking at liability being one step removed. That's what a corporation does. So if I have a company and the company employs someone and something goes wrong, that person doesn't sue me. They sue the company. So the only thing that can be lost is the company, not my personal assets type thing. Now, that being said, you're going to need a decent accountant or a decent tax structure expert to set it up for you. It's going to cost you some money. You're going to need to pay it. It's going to be the way it is. But even, you know, very simple things that young people need to understand is basic investment structure, basic structure of a company setup.

18:21And you can read books on it and you can jump on blogs on it and podcasts on it. YouTube is the favorite how-to network in the world type thing. And that advice for your state or your city or your country is going to be different depending from where you are. But usually it's a corporation for your trading assets, meaning your businesses. And usually it's some form of a trust for your holding assets, your investments. That's usually the case. But you need to speak to a lawyer or an accountant in your marketplace to know exactly what that should be. Perfect. So I decided on going with a corporation.

19:03Now, I'd love to take a look at the financing and funding side of businesses. What are the different sources of funding available for startups? And how can I determine which ones are the most suitable for my business? Okay, so one that's very much overlooked is grants. You know, governments in every part of the world give grants for people to start businesses. If you're a minority, if you're a female entrepreneur, if you're starting your business in an area where they want new companies, like you can look it up and everywhere in the world, They have an area where there's grants for if you start your business in this part of the city, they'll give you money.

19:42Why? Because they want to regenerate that part of the city type thing. So grants is number one. Friends and family, not a super fan because they say they're going to be silent partners. They're not. Banks is a great partner, but for a bank, you've got to have some form of collateral. And most young people have no forms of collateral. I like to think of the best way to fund a business is customers. Your customers are the best format of starting a business. Have them pay you for one year in advance for the service you do or, you know, have them on a subscription basis so that they're paying you every month.

20:20But customers are the best form of financing in the beginning if you haven't raised capital or can't raise capital at that point. How would I set prices on my products and services? Really great point. Number one, be as high as possible. Do not try and undercut the market. Don't try and be the cheapest one out there. That's the dumbest way to get into business. Businesses have overheads and need to make profits. When I worked for someone, I did it for this much, so I can do it for that much. No, no, no, no, no. Look at the market. Do some market research. When you're doing your business plan, you should be doing a SWOT analysis, strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats.

21:03You should be looking at the competitors. Now, you look at your competitors and you see the price points of your competitors. You don't want to be anywhere near the lowest price point ones. You probably aren't skilled enough yet to be at the highest price point ones, but you want to be between the mid-level and the highest price point on that. Second thing you want to look at is your cost. If you're selling a product, you've got to look at the product cost and you want to be making percentage markup. Now, every business has different percentages. My restaurant, we know that rent should be 8 % of the business.

21:36How do we know that? Well, you go online and you research. What cost should a restaurant have for food costs? Well, it should have between 20 % and 25 % food cost. It should have between 20 % and 30 % staffing cost. Do you know what I mean? All of that stuff's on the internet. You can do your research and find those sorts of things. But as a philosophy, you want to be, business is about profit, not revenue. Okay, so you want to have a higher price so you can have more profit. You mentioned the SWOT analysis. What exactly is it? So first of all, you're looking at your strengths. Okay, what are your strengths out there in the marketplace?

22:16So you got to know, what am I good at? That sort of thing. Where do I fit in the best? Weaknesses, what am I not good at? And you got to be real honest about that in any business. Otherwise, you will not succeed. Opportunities, where do I have the biggest opportunity for growth? And threats, what are the threats to the business? Now, a part of that is examining you, but a big part of that is examining the marketplace as well. So it's external and internal. When it comes to setting up the actual operational part of the business, what should I keep in mind when establishing a physical or an online presence for my business?

22:54Number one, keep your costs low. You do not need a brand new desk with the most fancy stuff. You need to go to an auction house or go to Amazon Marketplace, what's it called? Facebook Marketplace and buy a cheap shitty desk. Okay, do not high cost stuff. Do not lease things or put yourself on repeat payments for stuff. Okay, other than like you got to have a website. So you're going to have a annual payment for that. You got to have you got to have but you want to scrimp and save in as many spots as you possibly can when you start the operation. Okay. Use shared space if you can use whatever you can to cut your costs in the beginning, because that makes a massive difference.

23:36What kills a lot of companies is that they have fixed costs and those things recur every month and they'll have one down month and it'll kill them, you know, and so, or two down months in a row and it'll kill them type thing. So that's an important part of it. I think the next thing is to grow as fast as you can your customers and work as hard as you can and have one person doing three people's jobs if you can and just push it from every single thing. But deliver exceptional quality to the customers you have. I see too many startup businesses take on too many customers and deliver very average results and therefore they lose their business.

24:23You're better off to take on two customers, deliver amazing and then get more customers and deliver amazing than you are to take on 10, deliver average and then lose all 10. Repeat business is where there's profit. So deliver amazing, keep your customers then that way you get a great result. When it comes to websites, do I figure that on my own? only if you're a website specialist. If you're not, I pay. I mean, I'm number one business coach in the world. I've written books on marketing, Raise Your Hand Marketing, my latest book, all that stuff. We still pay consultants. Every month I pay YouTube consultants.

25:07I pay Instagram consultants. I pay SEO consultants. You know, it all comes back to your budget, though, in reality. You know, if you have no money, you're going to have to build your own website and you're going to be in WordPress and you're going to be learning it. But here's the thing, right? You're going to spend two years learning WordPress, doing it at night, and you're going to go out and you're going to ask someone a quote. And see, this is the thing. People don't even ask for a bid, ask for a price for it. And they find out that someone else would have done the whole dang thing for them for$1 ,200.

25:44bucks and they sit there go why did I not find someone else um you know most of the time I use a term called leverage right which is do the work once get paid forever but the the flip side to that is get someone else to do the work and and work out a feasible economic situation where you both win. I would rather have someone who is an expert at something do it than do it myself. Brad, what if I don't have the money to invest in someone who builds my website? Yeah. Well, the first thing is to make sure that your website is relevant. Okay. And relevant means content. It means great articles. It means video.

26:31It means infographics. It means answering people's questions that they have. I wrote Raise Your Hand Marketing. Marcus Sheridan wrote They Ask You Answer. These are a great starting point, but if your website is strong, meaning you have enough stuff and Brand Story by Donald Miller, if your website is strong to start with, what will get you the traffic is creating blog posts, basically. What will get you the traffic is, see, the idea of your social media is to get people to your website, to get people on your database, to nurture those people. Because you've got about 8 % of the market when they start looking for a product are ready to buy.